PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Sometime in mid-February, used tires started appearing in twos and threes on side streets in the Mount Pleasant and Valley neighborhoods.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Sometime in mid-February, used tires started appearing in twos and threes on side streets in the Mount Pleasant and Valley neighborhoods.

Within a few weeks, say police Lt. Patrick Reddy and Councilman Michael J. Correia, there were stacks and mounds of tires dumped in vacant lots, on school grounds and along the streets — as many as 800 to 1,000 altogether.

About 65 old tires were dumped behind Pleasant View Elementary School. Several hundred tires showed up overnight by Mount Pleasant High School. Fifty were piled at Triggs Memorial Golf Course. Dozens were dumped at the playground on Aleppo Street. Another two dozen had tumbled into the back lot behind Santa Teresa of Avila Church on Manton Avenue.

“Every weekend, we were getting calls about tires,” said Correia. Over and over, the city’s public works crews were sent out to collect hundreds of tires, at a cost of $4 to $5 each, Reddy said.

At 132-134 Pomona Ave., a well-maintained two-family house in Mount Pleasant, piles of tires were dumped in the back parking lot and along the fence. A neighbor called the councilman and police, who watched the house but never could find out how the tires were arriving and disappearing.

Then Friday night, the person police sought became too bold, dumping dozens of tires by the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge on Sheridan Street.

Police say the driver, David Almeida, 57, described by the police as a known drug addict with a long criminal record, had come up with a way to make some quick money.

While garages and repair shops are supposed to use licensed “tire jockeys” to pick up and dispose of their used tires, Almeida was offering to do the work more cheaply for $1 a tire, Reddy said.

When he wasn’t dumping the tires behind 132-134 Pomona Ave., where he lives with his 85-year-old mother, Almeida was driving around the neighborhood and finding places to toss them, the police allege.

The police gave Almeida a summons for dumping at the police lodge and another for dumping at the church, where, they say, the principal of William D’Abate Elementary School had seen him and his pickup with the tires last week.

The city’s code enforcement office is citing Almeida’s landlord because of tires stored at the Pomona Avenue house. The businesses that used Almeida’s services will also face penalties, said Maj. Thomas Verdi.

“We are going to find out where the tires were coming from, and those companies will be summonsed and brought before the nuisance task force,” Verdi said. So far, the police have identified two companies, he said.

On Monday, the police ordered Almeida to pick up the tires he’d dumped, Reddy said. They also cited him for the pile of some 100 tires he’d left at the Pomona Avenue house.

Almeida didn’t get them all. On Tuesday, Officer Rhonda Kessler showed a Journal reporter more than 50 tires still stacked along Bluff Street, around the corner from auto body shops and tire repair garages on Valley Street.

The police gave Almeida until the end of the day to pick them up. By evening, Kessler took his picture: Almeida standing sullenly in his driveway next to a trash container, filled with old tires.